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Originally Posted by Firebot
In Canada the right to strike is a constitutionally protected right. Replacement workers undermines that right.
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Agreed. Hopefully our provincial government will consider reinforcing that right by making similar changes to the Alberta Labour Relations Code.
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You can certainly be critical of unions while still believing that hiring replacement workers is a bad faith negotiation. My issues with unions have to do union tactics, policies and their transgressions (see CUPE Ontario's president) but basic union rights should still be protected.
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I’m not sure what tactics or policies you’re referring to but as far as the transgressions related to the CUPE President in Ontario I’d like to think that you’re smart enough to to realize that wasn’t a Union issue so much as it was a human being making a very poorly thought out stupid comment. There’s numerous examples of people who have nothing to do with Unions making similar comments. This isn’t justifying his comment at all, I’m just pointing out that trying to link it to being somehow influenced by his involvement in a Union is a pretty big stretch.
I missed the part where a Union was advocating for violence. I see no evidence that the Union funded any portion of the criminal defence costs for their members in the second example you provided so I’m not sure how you’ve reached the conclusion that they are protecting assaulters in that regard.
As for their wrongful dismissal grievance which I’m assuming you’re trying to claim is “advocating violence and protecting assaulters”, it’s likely the Union was advised by their legal counsel that they had a decent shot at winning a grievance for at least the 2 employees who didn’t assault anyone and who also weren’t convicted on the criminal harassment charges, and as such the Union had to either proceed with the grievance or risk being taken to court for failing to fairly represent their member.
I think some of your misconceptions may be rooted in not understanding that by law a Union can’t arbitrarily refuse to proceed with a grievance just because they disagree with what their member did.
To me the second case you brought up appears to be a case of a small handful(3) of individuals making a decision to do something that for at least one of them was illegal, but there is zero evidence that they were compelled or directed by their Union to do what they did. In fact there was even a Union meeting they should have been attending being held at the time of the incident. As a side note I find it interesting that you appear to only be associating these types of activities to Unions when companies have been found to be guilty of similar intimidation tactics.
In any event this legislation will prevent these types of things from happening during future strikes at federally regulated companies which is certainly a good thing. The second case is also a good argument for why Ontario should also pass similar legislation to amend their provincial labour code. Had it been the law there at the time no one would have been assaulted or lost their jobs, which I think we can both agree would have been a much better outcome for all parties involved.